


a game of give and take

by seblandersmythe (Soll)



Category: Glee
Genre: First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Season 3 AU, i felt nostalgic, it's angsty and then it gets fluffy, kind of, klaine break up featured
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 02:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18306764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soll/pseuds/seblandersmythe
Summary: Blaine meets Sebastian to give him back a book he forgot, and Sebastian ruins a perfectly painless business meeting because he gives too much importance to trivial things like movie tickets."I know you think this can't end in any other way than you having to let me go. But there is another way. I am an option, Blaine. I am."Season 3 AU set after Big Brother. An alternative cut of Saturday Night Glee-ver would ideally take place at the end of this fic.





	a game of give and take

**Author's Note:**

> i'm posting this on 00:10 am after binge writing it because my life doesn't let me breath and i have to take my chances when i can, even if it implys poor editing and not showering

Deja Brew smells like pine cone and old wood beneath the lingering smell of coffee, a faint note of caramel sweetening the air. If only he could, Blaine would melt it in a bar of soap and make himself smell like it.

It's Blaine's favorite coffee shop. Only a five minutes drive away from his house, it's one of the few positive aspects of the daily commute to Lima- he gets to walk in every morning for his medium drip.

He forces himself not to be nervous as he does what he's done everyday since the first week of September. He waves at Cheryl serving a client, he walks up to the counter, picks up his coffee order -a B scribbled on the side- and leaves the charge in its place.

He ignores his fingers are trembling and takes a deeper breath when he makes a deviation from his usual line to the door. He grips the book he's carrying in his hand as he's afraid it will run away.

Sebastian is sitting at a round table in the center of the coffee shop, a few books open in front of him and a tall cup of coffee sitting dangerously near the edge.

He isn't wearing his uniform, but a gray shirt with some faded black print Blaine has no interest in reading, and a deep red hoodie over it.

It's Dalton's spring break. Blaine remembers counting down the days to it, how young and carefree it made him feel to sleep in late and not wear his uniform around the halls, to go out every night and run until his lungs burn to still get back before curfew.

He remembers it well enough to know Sebastian's studying when he shouldn't, and he's not smiling when he should be.

He looks wrong, small in civilian clothes that Blaine only ever saw him in that night at Scandal.

Blaine swallows and throws the book on the table, over a notebook that has Nick's handwriting in it.

When Sebastian looks up it's clear he saw Blaine walking in but made his best not to stare, decided not to make it more difficult than it should be.

It's hard, to look in Sebastian's eyes when they're so sincere.

"There." Blaine barely mouths.

Sebastian smiles, a small soft upward turn of his lips that makes Blaine's throat clench.

Blaine should have just kept his mouth shut and walked away.

"Thank you." Sebastian says, his voice clear and honest like it'd been at another coffee shop at another time.

Blaine ducks his head briefly before walking out.

They both know it's a goodbye.

Sebastian just took away the only thing they shared anymore, a fine thread made up of thick pages worn out by use, and a library card slipped in the plastic fold behind the back cover, bearing both their names, signed a year apart.

Sebastian had forgotten it at the Lima Bean on a chilly November afternoon. Blaine had never been able to give it back, not when he refused to plan to meet Sebastian. It had been a lucky chance to run into Sebastian when Blaine was alone, to carve forty minutes out of his life to share two cups of coffee and pointless banter, like they hadn't just been on the phone that morning.

Blaine used to smile anytime he looked at the copy of Emma unassumingly laying on his bedside table, a small token of Dalton and Sebastian to skim through whenever he felt lonely.

He used to run his fingers on his signature, the letters messy and round, the book checked out in a rush. He'd follow Sebastian's name too, neat slim letters seemingly written in lazy strokes, like he had all the time in the world.

He won't do it ever again.

Blaine misses the keyhole of his car door three times, before he forces himself to breath.

It had hurt less than he would have thought to read Sebastian's text, now an unknown number on his phone, telling him they had noticed he'd never checked it in.

It hurt like few things in his life to see it laying on the coffee shop table, never to be picked up by him again, the scent of pine cone overwhelming as his eyes burned.

He breaths in again and manages to get the key inside the lock.

He hears the footsteps before he hears his name called- a rushed half jog slowing down to a halt, like Sebastian hadn't expected to make it in time, but still tried.

"Blaine?"

He shouldn't turn. His fingers start trembling again around his lukewarm cup of coffee.

He turns to face Sebastian.

He's holding a piece of paper in his hand.

"You left this in the book. I thought you might want it back."

Sebastian holds it up to him and Blaine has to blink a couple of time to make sense of it.

It's a movie ticket.

It's nothing important, nothing worth following him out in the parking lot when Sebastian has been so careful not to make a false step.

"It's just a ticket-" Blaine fumbles, before looking up at Sebastian's face. "I must have used it as a bookmark."

Sebastian's cheeks get a bit flushed and he carries himself a little taller, and Blaine feels his bones melt. His lips part before he can say anything.

"Of course." Sebastian says, and Blaine ducks his head.

"You keep your movie tickets." there's a smile buried somewhere in Blaine's voice.

Sebastian's lips quirks like he has nowhere to hide, and he fidgets with the ticket in his hands.

"Guess I can't get out of this one, can I?" he asks, a faint spark in his eyes as he squints at Blaine, and Blaine shuffles on his feet until he's facing him with his entire body.

He's gonna be late.

He shouldn't be here.

"It could always be a very sophisticated french custom." he suggests, his voice coloring in.

Sebastian smiles, that wide boyish smile Blaine had desperately wanted to forget. It had never quite worked, even when it had been buried in snark and a drawled accent, on the other side of an unstable phone line.

"In fact, it is." Sebastian plays along, his smile only getting wider. "I didn't want to be that guy that continuously drops the fact that he's lived in Paris in every conversation, you know?"

Blaine doesn't stop the chuckle surging in his chest, or his eyes from lingering over Sebastian's features, over the freckles on his nose made sharper by the spring sun.

"Oh, you'd never"

"Shut up. You like it when I try to impress you."

It's true. Blaine is a sucker for it, the way Sebastian tries so hard to be cool. The way he would ask for liquor in his coffee at four in the afternoon wearing an high school uniform and then pretend the barista was being unreasonable.

"I do." he admits before he can think better of it. It's so quiet he hopes Sebastian hasn't heard it.

But Sebastian's smile falls, his fingers stop fidgeting, and Blaine's lungs fold on themselves.

He can't breath.

"I have to go." he says, his fingers searching for the door handle.

He didn't expect Sebastian to move. To take a step closer, just enough so that he can reach out and put his fingertips on the car door.

He's barely stepped in Blaine's personal space, and yet Blaine can only seem to smell expensive cologne and the aroma of coffee lingering on Sebastian's clothes.

There's no strength behind Sebastian's gesture. He's not keeping Blaine from opening the door and drive away.

He's buying himself time.

Blaine wants to beg him not to say anything, but Sebastian beats him to it.

"You don't have to go, Blaine." he carries his voice round and clear, but he breaks on the vowels of Blaine's name, the same ones he always drawls a bit too long.

"If you want to, by any means do. But you don't have to." it sounds all wrong, desperate but unwavering.

Blaine tries to swallow but he can only moves his lips without purpose, small shaky breaths wasting his efforts.

"I know you think this can't end in any other way than you having to let me go."

Blaine needs to go.

His fingers scrambles on the car and bump into Sebastian's, and Blaine arches up, his hand jolting away, gripping at the strap of his messenger bag.

"But there is another way. I am an option, Blaine. I am."

"Sebastian-" he starts, sounding wet and dull, and Sebastian doesn't cut him off, doesn't try to speak over him.

He waits until it's clear that Blaine won't say anything more.

"It's true that I treated everything as a joke, but there are a few things that have always meant- something to me. My father." his lips quirk up like they do any time he's embarrassed. "Theater-" he holds up the ticket, and Blaine can see it trembling in Sebastian's unsteady hand. "How much I miss Paris, and yet Ohio somehow manged to creep up on me."

It's disarming, to see Sebastian make light of himself as he does of everything else.

"Don't forget how much you hate the color teal." Blaine suggests, his voice small but full, and Sebastian sighs in a chuckle, the resulting sound nearly making Blaine swoon.

"It's not a color. It's weird melange of green and blue that tries too hard. We've been over it."

Blaine let himself laugh, and Sebastian drops his eyes to the ground.

Blaine searches for his eyes and when Sebastian looks back at him, he's smiling.

"And a few things more, too. Talking to you on the phone every other morning. Wasting afternoons wondering if you don't mind wearing that much gel because you never long for someone to touch your hair. Messing with you just to see you blush."

Sebastian's fingers move to Blaine's side, and Blaine holds his breath waiting for the touch of fingers on his hip. It never comes, Sebastian's fingers a hair away from Blaine's body, making his skin shiver, never touching.

That's always been Blaine's move to make.

"You're a real thing to me, Blaine."

Sebastian whispers, his voice smooth and sure, oh so sure, and Blaine leans in, close, his eyes finding Sebastian's, then his lips. He needs Sebastian's scent to swallow him, to tell him everything is going to be okay, that what they have is something solid Blaine can touch.

He needs to kiss Sebastian and tell him whatever it is, it's real to him too.

"I have to go." he nods, and it's like rewinding time.

Sebastian jerks away from him and Blaine catches his wrist, holds him, talks to him in the touch of his fingers on Sebastian's veins and bones.

"I have to go." he says again, looking in Sebastian's eyes, and Sebastian looks less hurt, less broken.

"You don't want to." Sebastian says out loud, and Blaine envies him, for being able to talk, to give feelings a shape.

Blaine's never been good with words.

He shakes his head, and Sebastian smiles, small and quiet.

Blaine wants to give him back all of his confidence, to let Sebastian take up space again, tell him it's okay to feel larger than life.

He slides his fingers down Sebastian's skin until they're lacing with Sebastian's own.

He tries to talk once again, but he can't.

Sebastian holds up their hands, asking Blaine's permission in the the way he smiles, in the slow way he moves.

Sebastian presses a kiss in the inside of Blaine's wrist, and Blaine can't feel his knees.

He can't string thoughts together.

He wants Sebastian.

He jerks his hand away, but Sebastian smiles, and Blaine finds his footing again and begs somehow someway there was something in his eyes that let Sebastian know.

He looks over his shoulder as he climbs in his car, and Sebastian waves, and Blaine smiles, almost a laugh.

He shifts the gear and he smiles in his wrist, the thumb of his other hand scratching the worn leather of the steering wheel.

 

°

 

_"I'm unhappy, Kurt. When we're in the same room I can fool myself it's not true, but- it is. I feel like you're only with me when you're with me."_

_"This is about Sebastian."_

_"This is about us, Kurt. We never text. We barely talk. You never search for me."_

_"You don't either. I would answer if you did."_

_"I did text, Kurt. Before you stopped answering and I figured I was being clingy."_

_"So you just decided by yourself I should be the one to do all the work?"_

_"I never thought we'd just stop texting if I wasn't the first one to do it!"_

 

**To: 555-1212**

**I broke up with Kurt**

 

_"You're acting like it's my fault! When was the last time you complimented me? You don't know what it's like being your boyfriend, Blaine. Do you know how many time I had to sit on a stool and watch you perform?"_

_"Do you hear yourself, Kurt? You're unhappy, too. This is clearly not working for either of us. We're saying the same things!"_

_"No. What I'm saying, is that I accept that this can't be perfect. And while I try to make it work, you found someone else and suddenly I'm not worth the effort!"_

_"Okay. Let's play by your rules. Let's make it all about Sebastian. Let's say I give up on him and we try to make this work. What happens when someone else shows up? Someone who makes you feel the way I clearly don't. What then? I try to make it work, and you feel like I'm a chore? We're back here, having the same conversation about us not giving each other what we need? Kurt- we have to break up."_

 

**From: 555-1212**

**I'll need some stage directions on what to do with this information**

 

**To: 555-1212**

**I don't have any**

 

_"We have one fight and that's just it."_

_"Kurt, this isn't one fight. This is all the fight we never had and that we should have had. We should have talked about this. Both of us. Try to fix it, and not to make it work despite of it."_

_"We can still do it. We could, if you didn't want to get fucked by Sebastian Smythe!"_

_"Kurt- can you just focus on what doesn't work between us?"_

_"Can you? Focus on us? On me, and not just what it's best for you? At least once?"_

_"Excuse me? I loved you enough to never even consider an alternative to ending up with you. I've transferred schools to be with you. I've changed my whole life. How is that not focusing on us? On you?"_

_"I've told you, Blaine, that if transferring meant you'd be resentful, and angry, you shouldn't have done it!"_

_"Kurt. Please. You telling me after it's done that you don't want it to be a problem, doesn't make a whole summer nagging me about it disappear."_

 

**To: 555-1212**

**I mean**

**Okay I'm just rewriting the same text over and over again**

**Can we meet?**

 

_"You're really breaking up with me."_

_"I guess I am. I've never-"_

_"You're crying, now?"_

_"Yeah, I am. I thought we'd be together forever. Can I have a moment to mourn it?"_

_"Sounds sincere when you're the one who doesn't want to try."_

_"I did, Kurt. I've tried."_

_"Without telling me. We could have tried together. But you decided to bring this up right when you have someone to run to. That you think you can run to."_

_"What does that mean?"_

_"That it's okay, Blaine. Break up with me. Go get fucked by Sebastian Smythe and be thrown away the morning after. Then, when you'll realize you made a mistake, don't you dare come back and sing some stupid song about how guilty and sorry you are. If you break up with me now, we're done."_

_"You don't- it's not fair to- you don't know him.”_

 

**From: 555-1212**

**Sure**

**Now?**

**I'm at Scandals**

 

**From: 555-1212**

**Blaine?**

 

**To: 555-1212**

**I'll be there in twenty**

 

_"And that's all that you have to say. Just to make it clear it's not about Sebastian, it's about us."_

_"You knew telling me that would- you know what, fine. I'm done with this. I just- I didn't want it to end it like this."_

_"Go, Blaine. If you're done, go."_

_"Goodbye, Kurt."_

 

°°

 

It's been three days and it still feels like he's driving home from Kurt's house for the last time.

He'll make the drive to Lima for months still, but he'll never take the left at the third traffic light after the city limit. He'll never drive into the pathway again, he'll never stay for dinner again.

He didn't say goodbye to either Burt or Carole.

Finn refuses to speak to him.

They all do.

They're Kurt friends, Kurt's family, and he's the ex husband who keeps going to the Christmas parties.

He doesn't know how he thought it would work. Pour so much into Kurt that he wouldn't even try and make friends, not even with the ones he got along with.

But he'll make it. He'll take sharing a smile with Mike behind Tina's back, or overhearing Noah asking Finn what is it that makes this break up different than any other happening every three minutes in the choir room. He'll take Santana sitting next to him in World History, and Quinn sitting next to him in Math.

He'll come out of it.

He just needs time.

_Go get fucked by Sebastian Smythe and be thrown away the morning after._

Blaine knows Kurt wanted to hurt him. Rationally, he knows Kurt wouldn't have been so worried about Sebastian, so obsessed with him, if he ever thought Sebastian didn't want Blaine to keep.

Blaine knows Sebastian, they way they talk, the way Sebastian smiles at him and listens to him singing along to the radio in the mornings.

Blaine knows this is exactly what he shouldn't do, focus on Sebastian and not on his break up, not on learning again how to be alone.

That's why he's going to talk to Sebastian and tell him he needs time.

Blaine has other options rather than ending up with Kurt, and he owes it to himself to try and be his own option for a while.

Even if he spends the whole drive to Scandals thinking about Sebastian, about his smile, about what fruity girly drink he's been nursing.

Even if he didn't put gel in his hair after showering -Sebastian's voice soothing his nerves every time Kurt's words cut in, telling him how he had wondered if Blaine didn't like having his hair played with.

Blaine has given it some thoughts. Run a hand through his own hair in the night, restraining from touching himself pretending it was Sebastian's long fingers that were scraping at his nape.

The truth is, he doesn't know. It's not something that occurred to him, to find pleasure in his hair being touched- Kurt never brought it up, and he surely wasn't welcomed to mess with Kurt's hair.

He almost stops the car to vomit when Kurt finds his way in something that it's his and Sebastian's, but he'll have to learn to live with it. Memories of Kurt, and knowing he did the right thing making sure that's all they'll ever be.

He had thought he would have to be the strong one getting out of what was left of their relationship. That's what he knew about break ups, that the one breaking up is the one taking the lesser blow.

It doesn't feel like it when Kurt walks around proud and angry- and all that Blaine is, is lonely.

He's cold, really. He feels shiver in his bones, and it's not because of the warm April weather.

He tries to warm himself up a bit.

He thinks about his brother coming to visit again in less than a month to be there for their mother's birthday, and how Blaine wishes Cooper was already there, living in the room next to his. Living at home only makes it harder, to know his brother is far away. That even if he's sleeping in his own bed, he can't walk to Cooper's door and nag him about playing video games.

He misses having a brother. Someone he can be jealous of, and be angry with, and still love. Still being loved by.

He calms down enough that when he gets in the parking lot he almost doesn't think of the last time he was there. No matter how it ended up, he had fun that night, dancing to disco music Kurt hated and Sebastian made fun of Blaine for liking, but so clearly liked himself.

He climbs down his car with his phone in his hand to text Sebastian he's there, but a quick glance at the building show him Sebastian is sitting on the steps outside the entrance.

Blaine feels the inside of his wrist tingling, and he rubs his fingers around it when he pockets his phone again.

Sebastian's wearing another one of his striped rugby shirts, and a pair of jeans that look like they should be tight but are a size too big. It's a mess of an outfit and Blaine loves it.

Sebastian doesn't stand up but scoots over, and Blaine sits next to him, the left side of his body buzzing where it would take him so little to lean against Sebastian.

They sit in comfortable silence for a while, the muffled sound of eighties music in the background.

"Nice hair." Sebastian smirks, and Blaine smiles, because of course it would be the first thing he'd notice.

"I was in a hurry." Blaine shrugs, moving the next piece on the chess board.

"It took you forty minutes to get here and you smell like a shower."

Blaine brings a hand to his forehead, curls his hand around his crossed ankles.

"That's not a- thing."

"Yes, it is. You smell like clean cotton and some kind of old spice manly body wash. And soft, too."

"How does one smell soft?" he asks, and he looks to Sebastian a little better.

He finds Sebastian's cheeks a bit flushed and his eyes a bit less guarded. He looks like he's in that perfect moment where his head is clear, but the world is a little less harsh.

"It's a synaesthesia." he says, all sharp _s_ sounds, and Blaine thinks he might have a new favorite word. "It's a rhetorical device where you put together two words that belongs to two different sensory sensations to describe something. But don't worry, it's okay. I don't expect public school to teach you about this."

"You're an ass." Blaine informs him, nudging his shoulder, and Sebastian pushes back.

It's comfortable, to talk to him like this.

It's a bit like talking on the phone, to go back and forth like that in the dark, even if Blaine can faintly smell a whiff of his cologne.

He takes a deep breath. The concrete still smells like rain.

"I need some time." he says, and Sebastian listens. "I do like you. And I don't mean I just like the way you make me feel. I like you. But- I'm not- I have to figure some things out."

"That's good, actually." Sebastian says, and Blaine turns to see he means it.

Sebastian turns too, and he's smiling.

"I want you to have what you deserve. And you deserve to feel like you deserve things."

"Repetition, rhetorical device?" he says, scrunching his nose, and Sebastian leans against him, turns his head so that his nose brushes against Blaine's ear.

He could blame it on Sebastian's being dizzy, but he knows he has given him permission when he let him kiss his wrist.

"Don't be an ass."

"Then don't make it look like you don't care that I like you. Or that I'm asking you to wait." he says back, taking himself a little by surprise by how blunt he can be with Sebastian if he isn't careful of what he's saying.

Sebastian weight leaves his side, and Blaine turns to look at him under his lashes.

Sebastian's smiling, young and carefree, and a bit devilish.

It's all Blaine wants, for him to look like that. It's a bit sweeter too, that he's the one to make it happen.

"I thought I was under a strict family friendly filter."

Blaine laughs, because of course Sebastian would tease him about it, wouldn't just drop it even when it's clear he can.

"You can uninstall it." Blaine tells him, feeling his neck flushing.

"Sure? I've heard there are problems reinstalling it after you get rid of it."

"Sebastian. I'm sure."

"Okay." Sebastian hums, and only then Blaine realizes Sebastian's happy.

It's spring, and he's sitting next to Blaine in a parking lot that smells like rain, and they're teasing each other- and just like that Sebastian's happy. Blaine is a little happy too.

"So." Sebastian mulls in his mouth, eyes darkening. Blaine feels his hand moving and he breaths in waiting for Sebastian's touch.

His fingertips skim over the collar of Blaine's long sleeved henley, before his hand curls up and Blaine can feel the touch of his knuckles on his spine. He breaths a little deeper.

"Frankly-" Sebastian says, and Blaine knows they're playing in his court now. He's willing to.

"I don't want to wait. I want to kiss you."

Blaine's eyelashes flutter when Sebastian runs his fingers through the hair at Blaine's nape.

"I want to touch you and let you know what you've been missing. I want to make you know what you deserve to have."

Sebastian's hand pushes back Blaine's hair from his forehead, before he curls his fingers and tug him closer. Blaine leans into his hand.

"I want to lick you face, honestly."

Blaine chuckles, and his eyes don't leave Sebastian's. He scoots closer, his lips touching Blaine's ear.

"More than anything, I want you to stop hitting on the breaks. I want you to do everything you want to me."

Blaine curls his hand on Sebastian's thigh, feeling the firm muscle under his jeans. He doesn't pull back when Sebastian places his free hand on top of his, hikes Blaine's hand higher up, moves until Blaine is gripping at the top of his inner thigh.

"But-" Sebastian says, and Blaine's follow Sebastian's hand when he loosens his grip, gently playing with Blaine's curls. "I'll still want you when you'll want me too. I can play the long run. I don't mind."

It's true. Sebastian might have a bad temper, but he has patience. It's Blaine who's the one who seizes the moment, the one who rushes into things as soon as they feel right.

He leans into Sebastian, his lips skimming on Sebastian's cheek.

"If-" Blaine tells against the skin between his ear and his jaw, smelling mint and sweat. "I were to tell you I want you now, would you-"

As always, Sebastian waits. He doesn't cut him off, he lets Blaine think of what shape to give his thoughts.

"If I told you my parents weren't home, if I told you that I wanted to have sex with you tonight, would you still wait for me? After?"

He shuts his eyes, forcing himself to breath on the one-twos, the five-sixes.

Sebastian slides his hands on Blaine's body until he's pushing him away, hands on Blaine's shoulders, and Blaine's throat closes. His hands tremble, and he knows Sebastian can feel it on his thigh. He doesn't move. He doesn't open his eyes.

"B." Sebastian calls him, his hands sliding up his neck to cup his face, and Blaine looks at him. "I remember quite clearly-" he smirks sweetly, and Blaine can breath again "-telling you I am an option. Which implies, I want to be your boyfriend."

Blaine is a little happier still.

He searches with his fingers for one of Sebastian's belt loop, to hook a finger into.

"Should have known better than to use metaphors on public school kids." Blaine smiles, because only for him and Sebastian that would be an acceptable answer, and he's a sucker for it.

Sebastian laughs.

Not a chuckle, or even a giggle- a honest laugh that makes his eyes crinkle, and his shoulders shake; a laugh Blaine knows only by sound.

He looks beautiful.

Blaine can't break him.

He takes a vow to be careful.

"How about, then-" Blaine says, his thumb stroking Sebastian's leg back and forth. "I get us some tickets for whatever play will be on at the Lima theater around the end of May?"

"Are you asking me out on a date, Anderson?" Sebastian mocks him, his hands leaving Blaine's face cold, but lacing their fingers together.

"Uh- no?" Blaine says looking up and then at Sebastian, all wide eyed. "I'm merely offering you trinkets for your collection. I've heard the french are quite fond of theater tickets."

Sebastian's grin turn into a smirk and Blaine loves all the way Sebastian has to look at him like he's the sun.

"About that." he drawls, leaving Blaine's fingers to search for something on his other side.

Blaine blinks twice when Sebastian hands him a book.

It's a new copy of Emma. It's a newer edition, the pages are in good shape and the spine isn't broken yet. It's a beautiful cover, and it's teal.

Blaine laughs.

"What-?" he asks, blinking to make sense of it, looking up at Sebastian.

"The ticket was recent. I thought you might read it often and I felt bad about asking it back. So today I went to the bookstore, and now you get a new one." he smiles, boyish and proud of himself, and Blaine wants to give him the world.

"It's teal." he says instead.

"Of course. Since you like it so much."

"You know I hate it too." Blaine calls him out, and Sebastian shrugs.

"Of course. But that's what you get for defending things as a matter of principle."

Blaine lets him win, and skim through the pages of the book.

He thinks of the old battered copy sitting at Dalton with their names written in it, and now he can see it clearly: a junior checking the book out, adding his signature to the card, a few lines under Blaine's and Sebastian's names. The book is back where it belongs.

Blaine will try to be the place to belong for a book he never even finished.

He knows his eyes are glossy when he looks up to Sebastian.

"I didn't really read it." Blaine admits, and Sebastian ducks his head waiting for him to finish. He barely parts his lips when he continues. "I just skimmed through it because it was the last thing I had left of you."

Sebastian doesn't say anything. He looks at Blaine, takes a breath before he opens his mouth. It takes him a couple of false starts.

"Oh." Sebastian finally says, and Blaine hates that he can feel his smile falters for a second, that he has to block the intrusive pitch of Kurt's voice.

"You really do like me." Sebastian says with a smile in his words.

Blaine shakes his head slowly as he grins.

He still wants to wait.

He's still going to want to cry before going to sleep tonight.

He's still going to hurt when he'll walk in the choir room on Monday.

"Private school kids." he rolls on his tongue, setting the book down next to him, slipping his hands on Sebastian's waist. Sebastian's hand goes back in his hair and Blaine leans into it, a warm purr in his chest. "So academically smart, so short on social skills."

Sebastian's lips quirk up in that almost shy, amused smirk, and Blaine leans in.

Kissing Sebastian is new.

It's unfamiliar, the way want surges in his chest, the way it hurts to hold back as their lips press in a kiss that's almost chaste. Blaine's thumb digs in Sebastian's hip as he moves his other hand to curl around the back of Sebastian's neck, feels the line of his jaw with his thumb.

Sebastian's lips part against his, and Blaine slots their lips together, before Sebastian's licks at his mouth, and Blaine angles his head to deepen the kiss.

It's like tracing his fingers on smudged ink on a library card.

It hurts to part when Blaine has to breath deeper than his nose will allow him, and when Sebastian follows his mouth Blaine smiles against his lips, the note of alcohol and fruit an aftertaste to Sebastian's mouth.

It's a lot like being happy.

Sebastian's hand brings him closer, flat and large against the small of Blaine's back, and Blaine licks on his tongue, sliding his arm around Sebastian's waist.

Blaine is losing the thread of conscience somewhere between warm touches and tongues sliding against each other.

He loses it all when Sebastian moans in his mouth, deep from his chest, when Blaine runs his hand in Sebastian's hair.

Blaine wants him.

His fingers hook Sebastian's shirt up, find their way in the gap between Sebastian's back and his jeans.

Suddenly a Phil Collins's hit is rushing in Blaine's ear, and someone wolf whistles from the door.

Blaine blushes, but he doesn't rush away from Sebastian. He dabs at his mouth with his fingers, not really feeling his knees when he pushes himself up on his feet and out of the way. He stands next to Sebastian as the man, maybe in his late twenties, nods at them as he passes by.

The door has already closed behind him, and the song get drowns out by the noise of the street at night.

"Want to dance?" Sebastian asks, his hands in his back pockets and his mouth glistening, his innocence all fake.

Blaine throws his head back with a sigh, and Sebastian shrugs.

"One song?"

"Sebastian." he says, looking back at him, and he doesn't know if he has it in him to say no.

"Come on, I'll have to survive thirty days without you, give me something to work with here."

Blaine hates that he gets tongue tied over something like that after he had been second away to climb in Sebastian's lap.

Blaine knows Sebastian loves it when he gets flustered.

"I'm sure you'll find some way to keep yourself busy." he manages to say rising his eyebrows, and Sebastian ducks his head to the side before looking at him again.

"I mean-" Blaine adds sparing Sebastian from answering, bending to pick up his new copy of Emma from the ground. He points at the door with a corner of the book.

"You've heard Phil. You can't hurry love."

Sebastian laughs again that laugh Blaine only ever used to hear.

Blaine takes a step back, getting his keys out of his pocket.

There's confidence back in his steps, and he hopes he looks half as good as Sebastian does now.

"I'll text you time and date." he says, and Sebastian smiles.

"Okay." he says, and it's a bit raw, a bit hesitant, like he's afraid Blaine might not follow through.

Blaine guesses it's only fair.

He smiles all the way to his car.

He overstays a red light searching through the CDs stacked in between the front seats.

He rolls down the window and lean his elbow on the sill, and sings along to Phil Collins for the rest of the ride home.

_(Just trust in a good time,_  
_no matter how long it takes.)_

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is kind of an omage to many different little things i like about seblaine.  
> namely grant's quote about blaine being a real thing to sebastian, sebastian being a dork that puts pink bows on envelopes and tries to play it cool, how many times it's remarked they texted and called each other all the time, and more that i'm forgetting as i wrap this up.  
> also, fun fact: i didn't write this with you can't hurry love in my mind, and i almost cried when i realized i could have missed the chance of wrap it up the way i did if i hadn't been listening to easy lover in loop and had phil collins roaming trough my thoughts  
> and now i'm out.


End file.
